Altice USA saw its news and advertising business grow 10 percent during its third financial quarter (Q3) of the year, the telecom said on Monday.
Revenue attributed to the news and advertising division came in at $111.7 million, accounting for a small fraction of the $2.2 billion that Altice USA pulled in from other business divisions, which includes fiber Internet, cable television and wireless phone services.
The company’s news and advertising division includes a regional television news network, News 12; the U.S. part of international news channel i24 News; and Optimum Media, which provides multi-screen advertising and data solutions to local, regional and national businesses.
Altice USA did not disclose what accounted for the year-over increase in revenue, though News 12 and i24 News have experienced similar political advertising trends as other news broadcasters ahead of the 2024 presidential election and key Congressional and local races in the areas where News 12 operates.
On the service side, residential revenue from cable TV, Internet and wireless phone came in at $1.7 billion, down 5.6 percent, while business service revenue was mostly flat at $366.4 million.
Like other telecoms, Altice USA has faced pressure from streaming television services and fixed wireless broadband Internet products that have chipped away at cable TV and land-based Internet subscribers. Altice USA — which is separate from Dutch multinational firm Altice — acquired Suddenlink in 2015 and Cablevision one year later. Its television and Internet services are sold under the Optimum brand across 21 states.
Total residential cable TV customers dipped below 2 million for the first time, with Altice USA logging 1.944 million video subscribers, a sequential dip of 4 percent. Small business video customers clocked in at 83,300, down nearly 2.5 percent sequentially.
On the broadband side, Altice USA ended Q3 with a little more than 4.039 million Optimum Internet subscribers — a year-over loss of nearly 4 percent, and down slightly from the 4.088 million subscribers reported during Q2. The count of small business customers was relatively flat at 347,000.
Altice USA’s wireless phone business is doing better, with Optimum Mobile growing to 420,000 lines, a net addition of 35,000 on a sequential basis. Unlike peer telecoms Comcast (Xfinity) and Charter (Spectrum), which utilize Verizon’s 4G LTE and 5G wireless networks for their mobile phone offerings, Altice USA resells access to T-Mobile’s network via Optimum Mobile.
Altice USA says it hopes to have more than 1 million wireless phone lines on Optimum Mobile by the end of 2027, and is continuing to build out its pay TV business through the launch of flexible packages like Entertainment TV, Extra TV and Everything TV, which range from low-cost offerings that start at $30 per month to a plan that include premium sports and movie networks at $140 per month.
